Is what we see in the movies what an orgasm should be like?

The screaming, squirming, flailing orgasm? That’s a tiny fragment of the whole, a paragraph in a story -- maybe from a favorite story that you read over and over, or maybe from a story you open to but rarely. Or never. But sex is everywhere and everything. Your body is meant for it. In some form.

There are two streams of knowledge about sex in our culture right now. There is the stream of science, which is telling us more and more about the mechanism underlying sexual response, which allows us more thoroughly to grasp the complexity and diversity of sexual experience. And then there is the stream of mainstream media, which is taking increasing advantage of people’s fears about being normal, healthy, acceptable, and adequate.

Maybe sex researchers and sex educators should get together and start a glossy magazine dedicated to the true diversity of sexual expression. Full of stories and pictures that show readers that everyone has sex and is sexual, though some of that sex is burning hot and some of it is routine and dull and some of it is definitely bad.

Because the reality is that your body -- everyone’s body -- is designed for sex of various kinds. Some people are more interested in sex than others, and you may be more interested at some times in your life than at others, but sex is in there, waiting for you, like a book of short stories you carry in your cells. You may choose to read some stories and not others. You may show some stories to your partners; others you may keep to yourself.

A human body is meant for sex -- for some form of sexual expression. That’s what it’s meant to do.